Sept. 16, 2008
Head Coach Steve Spurrier met with the media for his weekly press conference Tuesday afternoon in the Crews Building team room. Below are some excerpts from his press conference:
Opening Statement
We’re getting ready to play the Wofford Terriers again. They’re 2-0 and ranked about 11th in Division I-AA ball. They’re very good. They won their conference last year and they beat Appalachian State, a team that won the national championship last year at that level. They know what they’re doing and run the ball extremely well. Obviously it will be a big challenge for our defensive team. Two years ago they stayed on the field and I think they had 72 plays to our 51. We were very fortunate to come out ahead in that game. We’re expecting another tough battle. We’re looking forward to it to see if we can make some improvement as we go on and if our offense can play a bit better than how we’ve been playing. I look forward to seeing all of our fans out here at 7 o’clock.
On Wofford’s look and offense
They are different. We’ve got a very good defense, obviously the best since I’ve been here in four years. We just need to get our offense about up to par (and) we can still have a very good year. Wofford runs the wingbone, kind of like Navy and Georgia Tech. They have a lot of formations and incorporate the option, so we have to look out for the quarterbacks and running backs.
On challenging games and preparing as coaches
They’re all challenging. We try to take them one at a time and prepare the best we can each week. We all try to prepare as hard as we can each week. It’s a challenge because of what they do offensively. Defensively they’re probably not going to have the players Georgia had but they are extremely smart. It will be a challenge offensively because we haven’t done that much offensively this year.
Every game is a game of `let’s play a lot better than we did last week.’ This is a chance but who knows how it’s going to play out.
On Kenny McKinley
Not expecting him back this week either. He obviously had a pretty good pulled hamstring. When it happened, somebody said he might be back for the Georgia game. I said not with my experience with people who have had a hamstring injury. That can be four to six weeks sometimes.
On preparing against Wofford
They know it’s going to be a battle. They know how good Wofford is. I think we bounced back pretty well from the last game. Our guys practiced pretty well last night. Our guys are pretty resilient and hopefully we’ll play and coach better.
On playing against the option
It’s a different mindset altogether. It’s a responsibility defense. We usually practice against each other on Tuesday’s. Coach Johnson mentioned we probably need to spend all our time looking at the Wofford offense.
On quarterbacks
Chris Smelley is our starter. Stephen Garcia is getting close to where he can maybe play a little bit more. Chris we think is our best quarterback right now. Hopefully he can make a few plays here and there. We’re still coaching him as hard as we can.
On team personnel
We’ve got the best team we’ve had here in four years, personnel-wise. We can compete with anyone. We still haven’t proven we can win. One or two this, that and the others, who knows what it’s going to take but we haven’t done it yet.
On effort level
Our guys have played pretty hard. The effort level has been fine. WE haven’t played real smart at times and haven’t capitalized on opportunities. Two fumbles last week and the other team got both of them.
On the offensive line
Jarriel King will start at left tackle and hopefully will start the rest of the year there. Our pass protection last week was better than it was the past two weeks.
On Spencer Lanning and punt coverage
He’s punted well. We’ve punted about four in the endzone which is way too many. It’s unfortunate that Akeem Auguste had a chance to grab that ball (on a play last week). He batted it back and I think it hit our side and bounced back the other way in. We try to get them to possess.
